First, ideas and beliefs are learned as a consequence of being born into and growing up among a particular group.

Second, an individual does not invent his or her own culture. Rather, the members of any given generation are carriers of the cultural ideas and beliefs they have learned from previous generations and will pass along with some modifications, to future generations

Cultural Integration

that the various parts of culture are mutually interdependent

Culture of a Group

consists of shared, socially learned knowledge and patterns of behavior

Society has these characteristics

It is territorially defines, meaning that its members live in a contiguous physical space

Most members speak and/or can understand the same language, although the language may not be the language everyone learned from birth

Members share a sense of common identity relative to other societies, usually because of distinctive customs and beliefs

Members are unified, although perhaps only temporarily and situationally, by an overarching organization that involves common activities or participation in public decisions

Subculture

refers to cultural variations that exist within a single society

Enculturation/Socialization

process by which infants and children learn the culture of those around them

Culture is learned

then it is not acquired genetically- that is, by means of biological reproduction

most important about cultural knowledge is

The members of a culture share enough knowledge that they behave in ways that are meaningful and acceptable to others so that they can avoid frequent misunderstandings and the need to explain what they are doing

The knowledge guides behavior such that the people can survive, reproduce, and transmit their culture

behavior of individuals varies for several reasons

First, individuals have different social identities: male and females, old and young, rich and poor, family X and family Y, and so forth

Second, the behavior of individuals varies with context and situation: a woman acts differently depending on whether she is interacting with her husband, child, priest, or employee

Third, each human individual is in some ways a unique human individual even when brought up in the same society, we all differ in our emotional responses , appetites, interpretations of evens reactions to stimuli, and so forth

Finally, cultural standards for and expectations of behavior are often ambiguous

Role

useful to describe and analyze interactions and relationships in the context of a group

Norms

shared ideals (or rules) about how people ought to act in certain situations, or about how particular people should act towards particular other people

Norms Imply

(1) there is widespread agreement that people ought to adhere to certain standards of behavior,

(2) other people judge the behavior of a person according to how closely it adheres to those standards,

(3) people who repeatedly fail to follow the standards face some kind of negative reaction from other members of the group

Values

consist of a people’s beliefs about eh way of life that is desirable for themselves and their society

Symbol

something (like an object or an action) that represents, connotes, or calls to mind something else

Two important properties of symbols are

that their meanings are arbitrary and conventional.

Arbitrary in this context means that there are no inherent qualities in the symbol that lead a human group to attribute one meaning to it rather that some other meaning

Conventional

refers to the fact that the meanings exist only because people implicitly agree they exist

Classification of Reality

meaning that people generally agree on how nature, objects, groups, individuals and other phenomena should be divided into categories

cultural construction of reality:

from the multitude of differences and similarities that exist in some phenomena, a culture recognizes (contucts)only some features as religious relevant in making distinctions

Worldview

the way they interpret reality and events, including their images of themselves and how they relate to the world around them

Culture is necessary for human existence in at least three specific ways

1) culture provides the knowledge by which we adapt to our natural environment by harnessing resources and solving other problems of living in a particular place

2) Culture is the basis for human social life. It provides ready-made norms, values, expectations, attitudes, symbols, and other knowledge that individuals use to communicate, cooperate, live in families and other groups, relate to people of their own and opposite sex, and establish political and legal systems

3) Culture affects our view of reality. It provides the mental concepts by which people perceive, interpret, analyze, and explain events in the world around them

Cultural Determinism

Some behavior that culture largely determines or dictates behavior

culture provides rules or instructions that tell individuals what to do in particular situations: how to act toward friends, coworkers, and mothers-in-law; how to preform roles acceptable; how to worship; how to have weddings how to settle quarrels and so forth

Biological Determism

where cultural differences have a biological basis, meaning that groups of people differ in how they think, feel, and act because they differ in their innate biological makeup